Another brave human who defies the embedded message getting out of Iraq and palestine, Dahr Jamail is a great addition to ones information behind the lies of the MSM and their talking heads. He is now writing for the Inter Press Service, The Asia Times and many other outlets. His reports have also been published with The Nation, The Sunday Herald, Islam Online, the Guardian and the Independent to name just a few. Dahr's dispatches and hard news stories have been translated into French, Polish, German, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic and Turkish. On radio as well as television, Dahr reports for Democracy Now!, the BBC, and numerous other stations around the globe. Dahr is also special correspondent for Flashpoints.

Here's an article about what is happening to women, who are 60-65 percent of the Iraqi population? When you look into that question, you get some chilling answers. Women are suffering unrelenting deprivation and are under horrific attack from the U.S. occupation, Islamic fundamentalists, and sex traffickers.
http://www.socialism.com/whatsnew/iraqi ... arity.html

Quote:

The story of how the situation of women became so dire is a textbook example of U.S. and British imperialism at work.

The British colonized Iraq and the surrounding region after WW I, dividing up ethnic groups like the Kurds into four different countries (Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria), and putting them together with two separate religious sects of Islam within the borders of Iraq and installing a monarchy. Haifa Zangana, an Iraqi born novelist, wrote recently in the Guardian (UK) newspaper that women were politically involved as early as the 1920 fight against the British occupation.

The country gained formal independence in 1932, but the monarchy remained and oil reserves were given to foreign companies. In 1958, a popular movement ousted the king and the new government reclaimed control over the oil. Labor unions and working class militias were active and mass organizing by Iraqi women won them the most advanced family civil code in the Arab world in 1959.

This was long before Saddam Hussein's Baath Party came to power – with the help of the CIA – briefly in 1963, permanently in 1968.

But in 1980 the Iran/Iraq war began, when Hussein attacked Iran at U.S. urging. Note that this was during the administration of Democrat Jimmy Carter, so the take-over of Iraq was a bi-partisan affair. US capitalists hoped that the Iranian revolution then in full flood, could be forestalled (an aim that was successful, but more on that later). The seven-year war bankrupted Iraq and precipitated a steady decline of women's rights. Then, Uncle Sam's Gulf War in 1991, instigated by George HW Bush, and 12 years of U.S./UN economic sanctions sharply worsened both the economy and the position of women. Many women became jobless, while their freedom of choice in marriage and right to travel abroad without a male relative were revoked.

Frequent US bombing, again mostly carried out by Democrat Bill Clinton, caused a lack of safe drinking water, uranium pollution, and lack of medicines and food, which killed an estimated 5,000 children a month.

As it became harder for women to make a living, prostitution increased. During 2000-2001, the Hussein regime beheaded 350 women accused of prostitution. Some were in fact political dissidents.

Now the occupation entrenches misery

Since the latest U.S. war and occupation, women in Iraq have become literally an endangered majority. Violence against them abounds on several fronts.

Economically, they are hit hardest by the country's nearly 70 percent rate of unemployment. Men are preferred for the few jobs that exist, even though huge numbers of women are widows and single heads of households.

As casualties of war, women and children are the overwhelming majority of those wounded and killed by the US' so-called "precision" bombs and missiles. While it receives no coverage in the US media, the international press and human rights organizations report the use of weapons known to strike civilians indiscriminately – cluster bombs, napalm and phosphorus incendiaries. This was documented in Fallujah, for instance.

The use of so-called depleted uranium (actually uranium 238, which is a by-product of the uranium enrichment process) is causing skyrocketing levels of leukemia and other cancers, especially in children. As the resistance to the occupation continues to grow, the US and British forces are committing horrendous war crimes. Independent media like Dar Jamail have interviewed survivors of massacres of men, women and children in the destruction of Fallujah in November and December. A GI who was in contact with the Freedom Socialist Party reported that the troops in Fallujah were carrying out wholesale massacres. The number of civilian deaths has become an international scandal.

And what are perhaps the most sadistic acts of the occupation have been totally covered up by the U.S. government and media. While the terrible treatment of male detainees and even youths at Abu Ghraib prison got sensational headlines, if no changes in US practices, the women detainees were hardly mentioned. But there are widespread gang rapes and other abuses of women prisoners by U.S. and Iraqi jailers. Most of these victims, many of whom are gang raped repeatedly, have only been rounded up to be used as hostages to force male relatives to surrender.

This guy gets to the truth about the tactics that the MSM would never report. Read more about this and other topics on his daily blogspots and news releases.

_________________Completely sane world
madness the only freedom

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